Go Daddy chokes on the Internet’s vitriol, pulls support for SOPA

Sometimes, the Internet wins after all. Yesterday, a day that domain company Go Daddy would like to forget, saw Internet legends threatening to take business away from it and moronic blog posts without commenting. All over its support of SOPA.

Here’s what Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman had to say about the change of tune:

Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation – but we can clearly do better. It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.

The company had a lot of egg on its face and has backed down.

Christine Jones, Go Daddy General Counsel, tried to save face by asserting the fact that the company has always backed Internet creators:

Go Daddy has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future

While this is a complete PR move for Go Daddy, it’s an important step towards obliterating SOPA and coming up with rules and regulations that make sense for everyone. If all of the other companies who were listed as supporters do the same, then there’s a fighting chance this thing will get squashed. It’s a good thing that the company didn’t let this go any further, because users were pledging to leave Go Daddy because of its previous stance.

Drew Olanoff was The Next Web's West Coast Editor. He coined the phrase "Social Good" and invented the "donation by action" model for online charitable movements. He founded #BlameDrewsCancer. You can follow him on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, or email drew@thenextweb.com